Documenting and disseminating information about the postwar mass housing drive

TOWER BLOCK UK

The Tower Block UK image archive is a fully-searchable database of around 4,000 images of every multi-storey social housing development built in the UK. The photographs were largely taken in the 1980s by Miles Glendinning, and the digitisation and cataloguing of the images was made possible by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

As many of the blocks documented and photographed have since been demolished, the archive functions in part as a repository of information on an important aspect of British heritage that is now vanishing.The archive itself catalogues multi-storey blocks as part of the developments within which they were initially commissioned and built. It gives details of notable dates, such as when local authorities approved the developments and when construction began or finished. Alongside this, the archive provides information on the local authorities, architects, and other agents involved in the processes of commissioning, designing, and constructing mass social housing.

DOCOMOMO Committee on Urbanism and Landscape (U+L).

TOWER BLOCK links closely with DOCOMOMO, the foremost international research and conservation group for the monuments and sites and neighbourhoods of the Modern Movement. We share with DOCOMOMO a concern with international research and information dissemination about modernist mass housing. DOCOMOMO is organised globally as a confederation of diverse ‘on the ground’ national groups. At the same time, a synthesising overview is taken by its international specialist committees, including Urbanism + Landscape – through a series of recent activities including seminars, conferences and publications: for individual initiatives see under ‘Resources’.